[ad_1]
HIROSHIMA, May 21 (AP) – Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol prayed together Sunday at the memorial to South Korean victims of the 1945 atomic bombing in Hiroshima during the Group of Seven summit, as the two leaders continued to work to restore A relationship that has been repeatedly hurt by disputes over Japan’s wartime atrocities.
Yoon, along with leaders from seven other guest countries and the G7, will hold an “outreach” meeting in Hiroshima on Sunday, the final day of the three-day summit.
Yoon and Kishida, accompanied by their first ladies, stood before the memorial where they laid white bouquets and bowed their heads in honor of the tens of thousands of South Koreans killed in the attack 78 years ago.
Yoon was the first South Korean leader to visit the memorial, underscoring the thawing of their rocky relationship.
Yoon praised the Japanese prime minister’s “sincere determination” to improve relations when he began talks with Kishida late Sunday morning. This is the third meeting between them in two months since Yin’s ice-breaking visit to Tokyo in 2018. In March, he said he wanted to deepen cooperation “based on our deep relationship of trust” not just between the two countries but on global issues.
During the talks, Kishida said the leaders’ visit to the South Korean memorial was “extremely important to Japan-South Korea relations and prayers for global peace.”
Later Sunday, Kishida will accompany Yoon and other guest state leaders on a tour of a museum honoring the victims of the atomic bomb and pray at the main monument at the Peace Memorial Park, a focus of the Kishida summit as he seeks to highlight nuclear disarmament and disarmament . non-proliferation.
Relations between the two countries have rapidly thawed since March, when Yoon’s government announced a local fund to compensate some former laborers.
Both Tokyo and Seoul, under pressure from Washington, feel a sense of urgency to improve relations amid growing security threats in the region.
About 20,000 ethnic Korean residents of Hiroshima are believed to have been killed in the first nuclear attack. The city was a wartime military center with a large population of Korean workers, including those forced to work in mines and factories under Japanese colonial rule on the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945.
[OnAugust61945thefirstUSatomicbombwasdroppedonHiroshimakilling140000peopleThreedayslaterasecondatomicbombattackonNagasakiinsouthwesternJapankilledanother70000people[1945年8月6日，美国第一次原子弹爆炸在广岛造成14万人死亡。三天后，对日本西南部长崎的第二次原子弹袭击又造成70000人死亡。
Japan surrendered on August 15, ending nearly half a century of attempts to conquer Asia. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
share now
[ad_2]
Source link